


Restless Soul

by Saturniidae



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Character Study, Implied Sexual Content, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:07:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24294082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saturniidae/pseuds/Saturniidae
Summary: Zagreus is always moving.
Relationships: Thanatos/Zagreus (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 619





	Restless Soul

**Author's Note:**

> If my prose were any more purple, it wouldn't be visible to the human eye. Oh well! Here's an off-the-cuff 2k of Than loving his restless bf! 
> 
> Title/lyrics form Restless Soul by Flor

`Oh, don't you tire your restless soul `  
`You're running, you're running, oh `  
`In place, you're going nowhere fast, you know,`  
`Calm down and lay down your restless soul`

Zagreus is always moving.

Like the path of Helios’ chariot, like Atlas in his toil, it is an immutable fact about the world: The gods squabble from Olympus, all mortals someday die, and Zagreus cannot sit still.

It drives Hades near to madness. So many days of Zagreus’ childhood were spent with the master of the house trying to force the ever-fitful prince into stillness. At his side, in the administration chambers, in Zagreus’ room, Nyx ever-watching and ever-amused.

When they were both younger, when Zagreus was but a child, he remembers being vaguely irritated by Zagreus’ exuberance for movement. It eased, eventually, when Hades put Achilles to the task of training his son, but there was always a special burst of energy saved for Zagreus’ friends.

Zagreus has always been a terror, and while Hades tempered some of the absolute chaos that was a young god with sheer brutality, he wasn’t able to squash Zagreus’ inability to focus on banality or even teach him to sit relatively still.

He remembers spending those years as sort of a beleaguered babysitter, hauling Zagreus down from tapestries, lifting him by the collar from the pool of Styx and getting a facefull of its waters splashed into his face. Once, Hypnos laughed so hard he cried upon finding the young prince’s head stuck between the railings of a balcony. Thanatos has heard tales of young Zagreus climbing atop Cerberus and attempting to ride the poor dog like a chariot.

As young people often do, he and Zagreus drifted apart. Thanatos has always worked as Death, but there came a time when Charon was no longer needed to escort him and he truly understood what it meant to be Death itself.

During that time, Thanatos remembers wishing Zagreus would take heed of Lord Hades and just shut up, sit still, and act his place. The Zagreus then was something dark—he spoke without thinking, acted rashly, and failed at everything with a level of incompetence that was surely intentional. He flirted about with Megaera, running his mouth off, and it still surprises Thanatos that she didn’t just drive the handle of her whip through Zagreus’ teeth.

Then the war began, and Thanatos left. He left, and it was long and arduous work. He returned to find Zagreus’ childhood ebullience and adolescent insouciance replaced with teeth grinding, leg-bouncing, and ink staining his fingers, and thought it an improvement. He thought Zagreus had learned his place in the world, and as such, they could return to being friends again.

But he was wrong. Zagreus skulked about the house like he himself was a shade: He shunned other people’s attention; he spent far too long in his chambers, the sound of things being thrown making poor Dusa flinch and worried Nyx.

So, without speaking to Zagreus at all, Thanatos returned back to work.

He left, longer than ever before—Lord Ares and the Lady Demeter keeping him busier than ever before. Some days (or nights) it seemed that Charon’s ferry would sink from the sheer volume of shades being escorted into his lord’s territory.

When he finally managed to return, Zagreus was gone. He left chaos in his wake, his perpetual movement transferred into something else, something destructive and unkind, and Thanatos felt like he was standing on a field of ash. The world pivoted then, the course of fate irrevocably changed, and slowly, Thanatos began to realize the place that Zagreus had learned in the House was something that didn’t fit. That it was something painful, just like the overflowing anger and resentment that spills from the place where Thanatos’ heart is.

Zagreus dies in his quest. He dies and he dies and he dies, over and over and over, a ceaseless, restless cycle that suits him so much more than chafing to hold the weight of his father’s expectations. His movement is a part of him, irrevocable and indelible. For Zagreus to stay alive, he must move, he must be quick and volatile. Each movement has meaning, if one is careful enough to look.

And so, Thanatos comes to understand, to learn and cherish each movement, each twitch and gesture, like slowly-hoarded treasures:

There, the way Zagreus scuffs his foot into the grass of Elysium, leaving a soot-stained wake as they trade barbs in the fields littered with discarded shields and spears.

And there, the outstretched hand, his body and words entreating Thanatos to stay, just a few more moments. One more moment of conversation, one more second to have company before striking out alone.

There, the way Zagreus moves fluidly, dodging and weaving around shades and wretches, laurels gleaming as his sword sparks bright. It’s as much as a dance as it is a battle, and it’s glorious to watch, thrilling to take part in.

They move, they fight. Discordant souls that bridge the distance between their natures, and then, one day, they move together: Thanatos’s own stillness melds with Zagreus’ butterfly-quick parries, and between them, the world could burn and they would know nothing but the flames.

Zagreus is white-hot, quick. Stillness does not suit him. Thanatos is patient, cool. He could wait for eons, and it would not bother him. They compliment the other, like the earth and the sky, the sun and moon. Thanatos would not change it for all the gold in the afterlife.

Zagreus fills his room with trinkets and chaises, soft pillows that see no use outside of being toed out of the way. It is a shrine to what he is not, a room where he pauses only to breathe. It isn’t a place to rest or to live—not until Thanatos stands, waiting, watching, in that dark room, his heart leaping up into his throat in a mimicry of the way Zagreus moves.

And then, it becomes a place for relative stillness, of a simulacrum of rest.

Zagreus does not loaf about, but the tempest of his heart quiets just a bit, and his fidgeting turns to something softer, something less like a wild animal trapped in a too-small cage. It’s as if the prince is calmed by the occupation of hands on skin and lips to lips, redirected and reformed into something else, something that is no more easily contained than before.

Hands that reach, stroke and pet at Thanatos—his hair, his skin, fingers between fingers. A jostle of a hip, a grin tossed easily over his shoulder, fingers pressed to the surface of Nyx’s mirror as he contemplates his next attempt. Toes that curl into those too-soft carpets, eyes that crinkle, and flames, ever-burning.

Zagreus doesn’t sit on any of his silly purchases until Thanatos himself does: He enters his chambers, still damp from the waters of the Styx, hands running through his hair as he gnashes his teeth and broods over his latest defeat. For a moment, he pauses, the flames of his laurels sparking high in surprise as he studies the way Thanatos shifts upwards from his sprawl across the chaise near Nyx’s mirror.

Then, the smile that curls across his lips and quick, even strides. Palms and knuckles that cup and stroke across the line of Thanatos’ face, never ceasing. Even as Zagreus curls his fingers against Thanatos’ shoulder, bracing himself as he rests a knee against the edge of the chaise, crowding up against Thanatos with his entire body, his thumbs do not stop the way they trace slow arcs against skin.

He is always, always moving—the perpetual tide that washes away the stillness of Thanatos’ shores. Thanatos never truly stood a chance of withstanding the storm in his chest that is Zagreus. He is weak with the sensations, with the wanting that Zagreus’ perpetual motion brings him.

A smile pressed to his mouth, fingers that undo his armor with deft grace; the curve of his back as he kneels, knees pressed deep into that soft rug, hands flat on Thanatos’ back, urging him forward. A mischievous smile, his clever tongue, bright-white embers that pop against Thanatos’ fingers as his laurel goes crooked.

He sets Thanatos’ blood alight, then strokes it higher, higher, only to draw back when it seems the whole world will go up in flames.

And then, hands and arms that pull him up, up to his feet. A pull forwards, an unseen dance around clutter and discarded weapons and clothes, back, back, and still Zagreus moves, head tipped back in laughter at some muttering remark of Thanatos’.

It’s beautiful, it’s terrifying. To hand himself over to someone so full of life and motion, but Zagreus has been nothing but gentle with him since the first crash of destruction that cracked his glass-spun soul and left it to leak and overflow. It will heal in time, each pass of Zagreus’ callous-covered fingers smoothing away the rough edges and searing in a new surface with his ever-present fire.

And oh, he is a malleable being underneath the attention of that fire, letting Zagreus’ constant motion guide him along:

Even as Zagreus lets himself fall back against the bed—the bed that never sees use these days when it’s just Zagreus alone—he’s still reaching, pulling, tugging. Stillness doesn’t suit him, not when he could be moving, when he could be cupping the back of Thanatos’ head, thumb stroking the closely-shaven fuzz there.

Words whispered into his mouth, against his ear, down the length of his neck. Fingers in his hair, on his shoulders, at the small of his back. And for once, Thanatos casts aside his own composure, grasping the storm in his heart and turning it to movement.

Never the same kiss twice, not with the way Zagreus’ head tips back as Thanatos pets against his sides, up over his chest, thumbs coming to rest gently at his cheeks as he’s drawn up, up into another kiss, and another, again and again, until neither of them can stand it.

Knees shift and hands grasp and then, even as they’re pressed chest-to-chest, forehead-to-forehead, Zagreus still moves. His heels press against skin, hips roll, his chest heaves; his fingers are tight in Thanatos’ hair, on his arm, then down his back, only stilling when Thanatos reaches, laces their fingers together and presses Zagreus’ hand into the sheets. Zagreus’ mouth takes up the slack, biting and kissing and saying things that make Thanatos flush, even as they find their release with each other.

Thanatos is dizzy with it all, that somehow this storm of a god is his, his to love and hold and be the sole focus of his attention, that he can hold Zagreus in his arms and take part of the motion of his soul. That Zagreus doesn’t see him as some cold, dead, motionless thing, but something slow-growing and worth cherishing.

Thanatos has seen Zagreus still only once. Face-up in Elysium, his body littered with swords and spears and arrows, like the Exalted had decided to use his body as a sheath in retribution. His eyes and mouth were open like he’d been surprised by the final arrow that had sealed his fate, and all Thanatos could do was watch as the River began to seep up from the blood-slicked grass, lapping at Zagreus’ body until he was pulled down, down, and away.

He never wants to see it again. He wants to watch Zagreus run around, making trouble, forever, for always. Those restless fingers can be put to better use than paperwork, that clever mouth has charmed the Olympians, and those eyes shine bright with insight to things different than this dark, dead world.

“You’ve gone quiet again,” Zagreus says, reaching out to brush his knuckles through Thanatos’ bangs.

Thanatos leans into the gentle touch, pressing his nose and lips to the soft inside of Zagreus’ wrist. “Mm,” he hums, content to be as they are now, pressed together and entangled, Zagreus’ feet slowly shifting against his own, warmth suffusing his body.

They don’t have long to be like this, lazily looped together in the afterglow. Zagreus cups his jaw, thumb stroking the arc of his cheek.

“Obol for your thoughts, Than?” he prompts. His voice is soft, just on the edge of rough, the sort that means that anyone he speaks to next will realize what he’s been up to. Thanatos can’t bring himself to be embarrased.

Thanatos presses their noses together, inhaling slowly, eyes shut with languid contentment. He slips his hands up Zagreus’ back, cupping the nape of his neck. He kisses Zagreus slowly, softly, almost chastely.

He can feel the energy of Zagreus’ soul humming, pulling tight with each simple kiss, a potential growing stronger and stronger until Thanatos has to pull away, a grin slowly spreading across his lips.

“Keep going, Zagreus,” he murmurs. “Keep moving.”


End file.
